FRANKFORT – With state revenues down and demand for services up,  state lawmakers are looking for every penny we can find this session to maintain the educational progress Kentucky has made in our public schools since the early 1990s.

We have so far managed during this Great Recession to avoid cuts to base school funding known as SEEK when most of state government have endured cuts of 20 to 25 percent in the face of massive state budget shortfalls. The questions we have to ask ourselves this session are: Can we continue to hold our schools harmless from cuts when we face our state’s worst budget shortfall in recent history? And, if we cannot, what is the best course of action to take?

The House says eliminating two days from the 177-day public school calendar is the best idea, while the Senate supports reductions in the very base school funding (SEEK) we lawmakers have fought for years to protect. If you ask me, neither idea is a good one, but I also know we have a constitutional duty to balance the state budget and have virtually no other means besides spending cuts to do so since no new revenue has been created this session. Still, somehow I doubt that taking “the road less traveled”, to quote the great Robert Frost, will “make all the difference” in this situation.

No agreement had been reached on the state budget bill as of early last week, so I cannot tell you at this time what cuts, if any, will be made to base school funding by session’s end on April 14 or 15. What I can tell you is our state’s expected budget shortfall of roughly $1.5 billion between 2010 and 2012 will make it very, very difficult to avoid any cuts to public schools this budget go-around.

It is hard to imagine any silver lining to this stormy budget situation. But if you look hard enough, you can find one. I found a much welcome silver lining in the funding that the Kentucky Lottery provides year after year for education in our state. Next to state education dollars from SEEK and local and federal dollars spent on public education in Kentucky, a huge source of education funding is—you guessed it—the Kentucky Lottery, which to date has provided more than $1.35 billion for college scholarships and grants for students statewide.

Did you know that 100 percent of Lottery’s proceeds go toward scholarships and grants, with 55 percent of proceeds allocated for need-based scholarships and 45 percent allocated for the KEES (Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship) merit scholarship program? I’m sure you have heard of KEES, which provides every Kentucky high school student with a GPA of 2.5 or higher with up to five years of college or technical tuition assistance on a graduated basis, depending on their high school GPA. Thousands of local students have benefited from KEES in the program’s 11-year history, and thousands more will in the years to come.

KEES and the other scholarship and tuition grant programs paid for by Lottery revenues are making a big difference in education in our Commonwealth. Some proof of this can be found in the Kentucky Lottery Corporation’s 2009 Annual Report, which reports a 32-percent jump in Kentucky’s college attendance rate since 1999 when the state began requiring that 100 percent of Lottery proceeds be used to fund the scholarships and grants.

What’s more, data on the KEES program indicates that more of Kentucky’s best and brightest students are staying in Kentucky to attend college thanks to financial support from the Lottery.

I am very happy that our Lottery has been proven and continues to prove itself as an engine of our state’s education system, particularly in these tough times.

If you are curious about the financial condition of the Kentucky Lottery, you will be pleased to know that the Lottery is booming. The President and CEO of the Kentucky Lottery Corporation, Arch Gleason,  reported recently to every lawmaker that last fiscal year was a record-setting year in sales for the Lottery. Over $800 million in sales were reported by the Lottery for the first time in its history last year, ensuring that this 20-year source of state education funding is alive and well with a successful fiscal year 2010 in the works.

 If you would like to learn more about the Lottery, you can call the Lottery Corporation’s Prestonsburg office at 886-9883 or go online to . Please come back here next week for a report of any budget action taken during the final two days of the session, including information about any impact a potential budget could have on our education system.

Until then, enjoy the warm days of April.